EU Seeks More Control over Violent Games on Internet

“We will also use this website as a platform to share best practice examples,” said Zypries. The ministers agreed to authorize the EC to begin a dialogue between legislators and game producers, vendors and ISPs at the EU level on better ways to control game distribution beginning “later this year at an invitation of the Commission,” Zypries said.

Germany already is acting, said Zypries. A 2002 massacre at an Erfurt high school prompted then-Chancelor Gerhard Schroeder to invite ISPs, industry and broadcasters to discuss “better ways to control violent video games,” Zypries said, noting a “popular fallacy that you can just ban something from the Internet.” She had harsh words for a Bavarian proposal to ban violent videos and video games from the Internet. “You certainly can ban them, but then they will just be offered from another country,” she said.

Content is being removed from German servers, Zypries said, but “for content coming from a U.S. server or a server in some Caribbean country, it is not that easy.” But Zypries has confidence in Germany’s 3-step system, she said. Courts can prosecute content or games glorifying violence, fanning hatred or promoting Nazism. An administrative rule permits indexing of games that shouldn’t be sold to minors. Content not covered by these controls but perhaps harmful to children must be rated by industry bodies and sold accordingly.

EU Comr. Franco Frattini, who raised the violence issue, auded German controls, noting differences across the EC. It’s not up to Brussels to decide which videos or video games to ban EC-wide, but “we should harmonize the protection of minors on the highest possible level,” he said. Frattini would like to see approaches proposed in a planned communication on Cybercrime, he said: “There is a relation between the growing trend to violent behaviour of young people and terribly violent computer games.”

Of copyright pirates’ distribution of illegal games or p2p-sharing of pirated versions, Zypries said prosecution and criminalization of copyright pirates is a major topic of the German G8 presidency.

Agreement on Data Exchange to be Transposed into EU Law

With German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schaeuble Zypries outlined other German EU presidency aims. Police data exchange, such as further linking databases on criminals and developing e-Justice projects, is a major project, she said.

Schaeuble hopes to simplify and speed exchange among EU police forces of genetic, fingerprint and vehicle data on suspects by transposing the Pruem agreement, negotiated in 2005 by Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Luxemburg, Austria and the Netherlands, into full EU law, he said. “If we manage to realize this between all 27 member states now, we get a gigantic sea of evidence,” he said. In principle, colleagues responded positively.

The Pruem agreement is even more attractive because it got a nod from participating member states’ data officials, Schaeuble said: “I hope we will get the same assesment for a EU-wide law.” The regulatory transposition spearheaded by some member states into EU law could be a model for similar processes in the larger Union, said Schaeuble and Frattini.

Non-EU states can’t be Pruem signatories, Schaeuble said: “It is only for EU member states so far, but it could be the model for similar bilateral agreements. U.S. authorities have asked many questions about the Pruem agreement, so there is much interest. We also have to talk to our US partners about passenger data records soon.”